Ral Grad: Unedited Audio & Notes

Manga Details

• Writer - Tsuneo Takano

  • Nothing is known about them, so who is this?

  • So this is another case of a writer with little to no info available. There’s been speculation in both Japanese and English-speaking manga communities that this is ANOTHER pseudonym for Tsugumi Ohba/Hiroshi Gamo, though nothing has ever been revealed, at least to my knowledge. Personally I’d believe it, just because Ohba seems to hate women, and… well… Takano certainly sees them as objects.

• Takeshi Obata

  • Notable people they were an assistant for:

    • Ryuji Tsugihara (of Yoroshiku Mechadoc fame) on Super Patrol

    • Makoto Niwano on The Momotaroh

  • Notable people they had as assistants:

    • Nobuhiro Watsuki (of Rurouni Kenshin and highly publicised pedophile conviction fame. Oh and Gun Blaze West) on Arabian Majin Boukentan Lamp Lamp and Rikijin Densetsu

    • Yusuke Murata (of Eyeshield 21 and One Punch Man fame) on Hikaru no Go 

    • Ei Ando (of One Piece Party fame) on Hikaru no Go

    • Kentaro Yabuki (of Yamato Gensoki and To Love Ru fame) on Hikaru no Go

    • Ryo Ogawa (of Ya Boy Kongming! fame) on Death Note

    • Yoshiyuki Nishi (of Muhyo & Roji and Bokke-san fame) on Hikaru no Go

  • Other works:

    • Cyborg Grandpa G (1989, 4 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump)

      • Shonen Flop episode 89!

    • Hikaru no Go (1998-2003, 23 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump) written by Yumi Hotta

    • Death Note (2003-2006, 12 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump) written by Ohba Tsugumi (aka Hiroshi Gamo)

    • Bakuman (2008-2012, 20 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump) written by Ohba Tsugumi (aka Hiroshi Gamo)

    • All You Need is Kill (2014, 2 vols, Weekly Young Jump) written by Ryosuke Takeuchi

      • Based on the light novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.

    • School Judgment: Gakkyu Hotei (2014-2015, 3 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump) written by Nobuaki Endo

      • Episode 49 of Shonen Flop.

    • Platinum End (2014-2021, 14 vols, Jump Square) written by Ohba Tsugumi (aka Hiroshi Gamo)

    • Show-ha Shoten! (2022-present, 5+ vols, Jump Square) written by Akinari Asakura

      • A brilliantly funny series about stand-up comedy, using Asakura’s comedic writing and the impeccable comic timing of Obata’s comic layouts and goofy cartooning to make one of the most laugh-out-loud series of the modern age… except when it makes you cry, that is.

• Publishing

  • Run Dates: 

    • December 4th, 2006 to July 9th, 2007

  • Series it replaced

• Over Time by Yoichi Amano (of Akaboshi: Ibun Suikoden and Stealth Symphony fame) (3 vols, flop)

• Series that replaced it

  • Sket Dance by Kenta Shinohara (obligatory chance for someone to mention Witch Watch) (32 vols, big hit)

• Series that started at the same time as it

  • Contractor M&Y by Akira Akatsuki (of Medaka Box and Shounen Shoujo fame) (2 vols, big flop)

  • Jyuki Ningen Jumbor by Hiroyuki Takei (of Shaman King and Butsu Zone fame) (1 vol, MASSIVE flop)

• Chapters/Volumes: 

  • 29 chapters/4 volumes

About the Manga

• Plot

  • It’s medieval Europe times and a generic castle is under attack by beasts called shadows oh no! A big booby lady named Mio (like the water enhancer) convinces the king to release a boy named Ral from his prison. Locked since infancy in total darkness, for 15 years Ral has only had his shadow, a blue dragon named Grad, as company, along with Mio who would teach him things by talking to him through the big orb he was trapped in. After being released Ral immediately attacks the king, who was his bio-dad, for holding him captive. He then rips open Mio’s shirt because he doesn't know what boobs are. Mio’s surprisingly cool with it and lets him touch her breasts before telling him that if he defeats the shadows then she’ll “teach him about women.” Ral goes outside and summons Grad, who decimates the horde of shadows, and then he goes to bed with Mio and it’s kinda weird. Ral is now obsessed with boobs and has built up a harem of naked girls. It turns out that the shadows originate from a place called Le Noire but an evil big booby shadow named Opsquria AKA Lady Bira let them out and is now trying to rule the world or something so we gotta stop her. Lady Bira’s goal is to kidnap beautiful women and suck the beauty out of them which Ral does not like. Ral and Mio let out a bunch of other people with shadows in orb cages and two of them aren’t evil. One of them stays back to guard the castle and we never see him again, and the other is Aia and her Chameleon dog Quru. Aia is a 13 year old girl and the manga forgets she exists for chapters at a time. Ral and the gang go to another castle under siege because Ral heard the princess there has big boobs. 

  • They save the princess but she’s a jerk so they recruit her shadow user, Kafka, to travel with them. They then go to a town where women are hypnotized and captured even though they have a wall to keep shadows out. Uh oh though it turns out that the wall casts a shadow that shadows come out of. Double uh oh, THE WALL IS MADE OUT OF SHADOWS! Grad uses his flamme blue laser attack to defeat the shadows yay. They decide to sail to the island where Lady Bira lives but are interrupted by Sunsu, a kid who wants to help them. Apparently a legendary warrior named Ganette who has the white tiger shadow passed through the town and decided not to help free the women which led Sunsu’s sister to be kidnapped. They say he can’t come unless he gets a shadow so he goes and gets a shadow and they’re off. Some stuff happens on the way who cares and then they get to the island. Ral decides to save a total 10/10 smokeshow instagram baddie ninja from a racistly designed shadow but oh no it turns out she was an evil shadow in disguise! Thankfully Ral is saved by Ganette and his two hot girls before leaving. Ral trains Sunsu to defeat Ganette and they learned that there’s a labor camp with enslaved men, and a prison tower with enslaved women. But instead Ral decides to be a fucking moron and go after Lady Bira right away, only to get caught up in a spider web set by a bad guy. 

  • Ganette and Ral’s friends catch up and save him and Ral teams up with Sunsu to defeat Ganette in a duel to make him help them free the women. First they free the men and give them a bunch of shadows and then they go to free the women but are stopped by Yaya, a young girl with the red phoenix because we are officially in a “4 mythical beasts of Chinese lore” situation except this time there’s 5. The other two are the black rhino and the most dangerous beast of all: the fucking clear human holy shit wow really Jesus fuck. Ral, like all 5 of the users, instinctually knows that there’s a special fusion form he can go into with grad. So he does that and they fight so good that the Phoenix is like “you know what guys I’m gonna head out cuz you seem pretty strong.” Next they go after Lady Bira who siccs the Black Rhino on them but the Black Rhino is weak to everything except Grad’s blue flame attack so like it’s all good. The only one left is Lady Bira and it turns out she’s the clear human, woah! She has the power to make shadows dissolve by looking at them, but when she tries to do it to Grad it doesn’t work because Grad and Ral have now fused into one being, making Grad a human even though he’s clearly not. But yeah they kill her and get an orb that, when fused with a female shadow, will bring back the shadows’ home Le Noire. The phoenix comes back and decides to do just that and then all the shadows including the ral/grad fusion are sucked in to live there and that’s the end fuck

• Characters

  •   Ral

    • Shadow dragon twink

    • Likes fuckin

    • Battle master or something 

    • Very immature

  • Mio

    • smart

    • Actually has a character arc where she realizes she can't keep up 

  • Queen Opsquria

    • Is she beautiful 

    • Bad shadow 

  • Ganette

    • The guy

    • White tiger

    • Mexican??

    • Doesn't fuck around usually 

Why it Failed

•  Main villain seems lame

• The setting honestly seems kinda confusing 

• Sexualizes the fuck out of women

• In chapter 2 where did his tattoo and cod piece go

• So much talking 

• Why did he pick the loli over the cool guy, oh right 

• This first second shit just feels weirdly confusing why not just have shadows and monsters

• This plot is complete nonsense 

• Why is it introducing more characters, you already have 3 MCs with almost no background stop adding more 

• The monster designs seem to have no real sense of language to them and some of the mcs even look similar 

• None of these characters seem to have any sense of development 

• This series is so blatantly written moment to moment

• They never stop talking 

• So pretty much if you didn't have a special shadow you were going to be useless 

What it Did Well

• Nice art

• It goes fast

• Finally some megamanning

• It at least tries to seed ideas in combat like showing Kafka trying a move then using it in combat later

• Ganette actual feels like someone whos done this a long time

Where it Could Have Gone

• Respect women?

• I think this could have been a cool game of thrones style political plot with the shadows viewed as tools of war

• A more Pokémon like approach would have been cool

• Make the dragon have a personality 

• The doesn't know anything about the world is completely unutilized 

• Maybe from mios perspective and we see her growing as she leaves the castle and gains a shadow

• Ganette should have swaped Kafka out 

• Give Kafka the phoenix 

Misc Thoughts

•  I'm sure the translator felt very clever with tit for tat

• How did they not think a shadow detecting dog isn't insanely useful when they can pretend to be people 

• Why was 200 men not enough but he only had 89 shadows

• They retconned the fuck out of sunsu dying 

• The phoenix is literally mac

• Maxy Bee thoughts:

  • RalΩGrad is a tie-in to the attempted JRPG franchise Blue Dragon, which people in the west would mostly know for its Xbox 360 game by Artoon and Mistwalker, featuring designs by Akira Toriyama, a scenario by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, and music from the legendary Nobuo Uematsu. RalΩGrad is easily the most peculiar part of the media mix project, but here’s the full list of Blue Dragon material for anyone interested:

    • Blue Dragon (Xbox 360 Turn-based RPG)

    • Blue Dragon (Anime, 102 episodes)

    • Blue Dragon Plus (Nintendo DS RTS)

    • Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow (Nintendo DS Action RPG)

    • Blue Dragon: The Seven Dragons of the Sky (V-Jump manga, 1 volume, sequel to first game)

    • Blue Dragon ST (Monthly Shonen Jump manga, 1 volume, same world as video game)

    • Blue Dragon RalΩGrad (Weekly Shonen Jump manga, 4 volumes, doing its own weird thing)

    • Blue Dragon Role Playing Card Game (it’s a card game)

  • The omega between Ral and Grad in the title is actually supposed to be a ☊ apparently, the ascending node in astrology. It is often referred to as the ‘dragon’s head’. So there you go. 

• French notes from tucker

  • The french is overall bad, but some of the translations

  • Délire-Monstre - monster of delirium 

  • Flamme Bleue - “blue flame,” obviously

  • Le Noir - Means “the blackness”

  • Chaîne Lord - Chaîne pronounced “shen”, Is the French word from which the English word “chain” comes, as you can probably guess

  • Chauve-souris Noire - French for “black bat”

  • Roi-Serpent - “snake king”

  • Cinq Chevaliers - “Five knights”

  • Dure-faucille - “Hard sickle”

  • Duofurqué - fake french but Bifurqué,” the equivalent of English “bifurcated

  • Opsquria - Obscure which originally meant dark

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary

  • Community

    • Tucker: Worst main protagonist since Build King | Sexual harassment is not a personality

    • Maxybee: More like SHIT for tat, right?

    • Armored Queen: Pre Isekai era fantasy slop, anyone?

    • Diego: Ramping Basement Creature vs The Simps

    • duderocks: Basement dweller fights army of simps

    • Everyone's Favorite Uber-Talente: Dragon deez nuts to the axeman

    • FunkyGreenOverdrive: Even Sigmund Freud would be embarrassed

    • LordAnubis: Axe the Dragon! Ral Grad L!

    • Meru: That's not how you say goodday

    • Monster Hunter Ichi: Wild interpretation of the source material

    • Portal man: Space dandy, eat your heart out | in shadow realm, boobs grab you!

    • Redblade: Unique fantasy contaminated with excessive fetishes

    • Riel: Basement child discovers what boobs are.

    • Sbubby: Blue Dragon? Better cheer him up

    • Unlinkingduck: What the hell is a “flend”???

  • David: Characters shoulda read sex ed 120% | The title’s omega stands for consent

  • Jordan: never should have left the shadows | gotta save the big booby ladies